The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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So if I assaulted some cheerleader in high school or even college, would it disqualify me for Man of the Year here on the South End? I mean, isn’t there some kind of statute of limitations for youthful crime? And if I was drunk at the time, or stoned out of my head, wouldn’t that help explain my actions and even erase some or all of the guilt? Not saying I did, mind you, not admitting to anything, just wondering out loud here, just asking a philosophic question.

And if Sheila (not her real name, of course) stepped forward after all these years to accuse me (not saying she exists, remember), should I admit to what I did and maybe ask her forgiveness? Or would it be better to deny deny deny the possibility, slim to impossible though it might be, that maybe, just possibly, I was too whacked that lost evening to remember my amorous advances, much less realize they might have been mistaken for rape? Or can we just say what happened that long ago shouldn’t be held against me now, after a life of coaching girls basketball and going to church every Sunday. My friends vouch for my sanctity in the times they have known me, c’mon, isn’t that testimony enough?

Yeah, I feel kinda bad for Sheila (not her real name, maybe not even a real person), cause I can see she might have suffered a little all those years and I wish like hell she’d let bygones be bygones, but geez, she really has held onto this thing, some kind of obsession it looks like to me (although I’m not a psychiatrist or anything) and maybe she took this preoccupation and turned it into a delusion, who knows? Maybe something did happen back then at that party I wasn’t even at and somehow, in her shock and confusion, thought it was me grinding on top of her when actually it was my buddy egging me on, although he claims he wasn’t there either and if he was, he was too smashed to remember that night or really many others back then.

Sure, we drank a few beers, my buddy and me, and we played a few innocent drinking games. Those people who say we drank too much, they forget I went to church every Sunday and I coached girls basketball, but I never drank so much I wouldn’t remember everything I wrote down on my calendar. Check my calendar. There’s no day where I wrote down I tried to rape a Sheila … or any other girl. I was working out, going to football camp, playing Devil’s Triangle (it’s a harmless drinking game!) so anybody can see I didn’t have time to rape a Sheila (which is not her real name), check it out for yourself.

I’m a good guy. I worked my butt off in college. I studied hard and yeah, I drank an occasional beer, I went to church, I have been a pillar of the South End all these years. Why would something that happened, maybe happened, so long ago matter one iota now? We all had some youthful indiscretion, right? Right? We should just forget about that now and move on. And Sheila, whatever your name is, you need to move on too. If you need any help with that, be sure to call me. Or my buddy who you might have mistaken for me. We can be there for you.

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That poor man, Kavanaugh, has been put through more than enough, at least according to the Judge himself and his supporter, the great senator from South Carolina. Personally, I’ve been put through enough as well, and unless I miss my guess, you have too. The man is twisting in the wind, as we say down here on the storm-tossed beaches of the South End, a veritable piñata for the #MeTooMovement and half of the country following every columnist, news feed, Facebook troll and Instagram user. The FBI is on the case, at least for one week, no need to take longer, there are senators in a great hurry to rush this thing to the floor and vote for the man with all due haste. The Wheels of Justice grind … well, not slowly in this case and not too fine, but we got an election coming up and the worst scenario for those senators would be to fail to put an obvious partisan ally on the Big Bench, to hell with judicial decorum and fair mindedness. The boyz want a bullet proof Supreme Court and if it costs that institution the respect of an astonished nation, by god, that’s the price.

Whether you believe Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser or him, whether you applauded his histrionics and his counter attacks on what he presumed are HIS accusers, what you will remember is an angry little man willing to vent his rage in front of a national audience, a privileged fellow who can scarcely believe his credibility can be questioned, an entitled kid who apparently never really grew up, a prep school punk who punches at those who dare to ask a probing question. He’s a lot like the man who nominated him, another accused sexual predator immature in outlook and menacing in demeanor. That guy was elected President and if recent history offers any lessons, this one might be confirmed too.

Senator Graham, in his spluttering screed, yelled a red-faced accusation that ‘you people’, meaning his colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, ‘would do anything to win.’ The kettle is black said the pot. If memory serves, those same people confirmed Gorsuch awhile back and Graham’s people refused to consider Merrick Garland. Who deserves to be outraged, Lindsay? Certainly not you.

I wish this partisanship would settle down. I wish we had a little respect for the government, the media, the rule of law. But there are people who don’t. They claim the mantle of Populism, they vow to drain the swamp of government, they label legitimate journalism fake news, they trample established decorum and decency and they play a mean and hard ballgame. The Supreme Court, already under some scrutiny for biased opinions, is the newest victim of these folks’ drive to power. Kavanaugh or not, the curtain has been pulled back. Oz is a Lindsay Graham, a mean-to-the-core little man full of sound and fury, signifying not very much, certainly nothing deserving of applause.

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These are scary times for young men in America, so sez the Commander-in-Chief after accusations arose on his nominee for the Big Bench for sexual malfeasance in high school and college. If anyone would know, it would be the Big Bopper, a man who never grew beyond the sexual assaults of his youth. Or his middle age. And probably hasn’t yet. But for America’s young men, let us be afraid for them.

Well, okay, I’m not gonna lose sleep worrying. Boys will be boys isn’t going to cut it and if some of my testosterone-overdosed buddies think those indiscretions of their drunken youth justify giving poor Brett Kavanaugh a pass, they need to rethink things. I remember a couple of lab techs I used to work with in my prestigious career as a graveyard orderly at a nearby hospital who’d been warned to leave the nurses alone. They thought it was all a hoot, what harm could it possibly do? This was thirty years before the #MeTooMovement and their women colleagues were fair game as far as they were concerned. I tried talking to them about this attitude after witnessing some shenanigans and all I got was amused smirking. Today they’d be fired, pack up, boys and hit the pavement.

I wonder how many of us males are squirming in our BVD’s watching Kavanaugh raging against the injustice of being pilloried for crimes 3 decades ago. When he was intoxicated, no less. How many feel sympathy because they can imagine themselves in his seat, pants on fire. Sure he’s gotta lie. He sure can’t admit to being a blackout drunk. He sure can’t claim it was all a joke grinding away on that woman with his buddy egging him on. He sure doesn’t think it’s fair to have this adolescent frivolity brought up now that he’s a middle aged judge. And how many of us guys take his side because, well, there but for the grace of God and the statute of limitations go they. A lot, I’m betting.

What I’m really hoping is that a lot of that squirming is out of belated guilt. Maybe Kavanaugh is a mirror now and Dr. Ford’s anguish could be someone they know. Could be that they’re learning a few hard lessons in contrition. But I suspect most are going to side with the Judge. If we can overlook his past, maybe we can let our sleeping dogs lie too. Me, I think Trump, as always, has it backwards. These are scary times for young women in America. Same as they’ve ever been, same as they’ve ever been.

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These are, admittedly, strange times in the Social Republic of America. We’re waiting to be great again and this week we’re anticipating the decision regarding whether Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Big Bench. Partisanship has reached a boiling point judging by the spluttering screed of Sen. Lindsay Graham in a spirited attack on ‘you people’, meaning his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Kavanaugh shouted a conspiratorial diatribe at everyone from liberals to the Clintons, a sad beginning for what might become this era’s new judicial restraint.

Evidently the playbook now requires undermining the legitimacy of the press, attacking our own government and the government of our allies, ripping up trade treaties and treaties to keep nuclear weapons contained, using the powers of Congress and the President to attack perceived enemies, something we frowned on in the Nixon years but apparently is fine now. What’s really intriguing in these vitriolic times is the President’s embrace of folks like Russia’s Putin and the Philippine’s Duterte, totalitarian strongmen bereft of law and decency, but who Trump nevertheless touts as worthy of emulation. Try to imagine Obama channeling Joseph Stalin. Or George Bush writing Valentine Day cards to Khomeini. You think things aren’t upside down, inside out, think again.

This week Donald fell in love. Not with Melania, not with Ivanka, not with Lindsay Graham (although I think he may have a crush), but with none other than Little Rocket Man, who, sez the Prez, wrote him a wonderful letter, an admiring letter, a letter that was nothing less than a work of art. You want Trump’s respect, praise him. You want his admiration, suck up to him. You want his love, tell him how great a leader he is. He’ll return the favor. You don’t even have to have incriminating evidence of prostitutes pissing on his bed, he’ll return your love.

The man just wants approbation. He wants you to say he’s not just okay, he’s the most okay of anyone, ever, anywhere, anytime. If we had god kings, he would be ours. If we build him a pyramid, he would find it in his heart to forgive us. If we chisel out Lincoln’s ugly visage on Mt. Rushmore and replace it with his, the world would be given to you. If you took out the other three losers and renamed the mountain Mt. Me, no door would ever be closed to you. All he wants is your love. Love is all he needs. In the meantime he has to find it in all the wrong places.

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